Hansac's Talk

I have always been a keen observer of culture and race, of religion and faith. When I was in Sacred Heart, I learned a little bit about Catholicism and to a certain extent, Protestantism. I learned to differentiate the cacophony of Foochow dialect and the structured Mandarin, without understanding either one language. I learned the values of acceptance and accomodation, as the La Salle brothers have respected my faith, and my Chinese friends has accepted me into their fold. I learned first-hand about schisms, in faith, in race, in culture, in a nation.

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My family, and many other non-Chinese families in Sarawak, have been "infiltrated" by Chinese elements, for hundreds of years. The Kelabits and Kenyahs first received visitors from China 600 years ago. Those Orang Ulus does not look like Chinese merely due to coincidence!

My family received "subversive" Chinese elements fairly recently, maybe the last 100 years. But let me talk about recent additions.

My late father's first wife was a Chinese by the name of Sara Ho. Most of my brothers and sisters looked Chinese. My third brother, Ariffin, married a Chinese who was adopted at birth by a Malay family. He looked Chinese, his wife looked Chinese, and dang, does his five children look Chinese or what. And they have that Chinese "myth" with them, i.e. Chinese are clever people. It is hard to argue with this vis-a-vis Ariffin's daughters because the first daughter became the best SPM student in Sarawak in 2000 and now doing medicine in Ireland. The second daughter is now doing medicine in India, and the third daughter is doing medicine in Unimas. If that is not a testament to the superiority of the Chinese race, I do not know lah.

Even though I myself looked Chinese, I do not know whether I have Chinese blood in me. My mother's mother was a Melanau from Dalat, and my mother's father was an from Sumatera, Indonesia.

My second wife is half-Chinese, her mother is a Chinese adopted at birth by a Malay family. But my second wife learned Hokkien and Mandarin later in life and not through her mother, who doesn't speak Chinese at all.

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It was common for Malay families in Sarawak to adopt Chinese babies. Then, it was not beneath a Chinese to handover his/her children to a Malay family.

My auntie, the late Usu Bi'ah, adopted two Chinese girls who are sisters (of the same father/mother, Aluyah and Zaiton). Aluyah and Zaiton's Chinese brothers and sisters regularly visit them during Hariraya in Sibu. Another auntie, Buk Ibot, adopted Umei and Jijah, both sisters too.

Throughout Sarawak this adoption phenomena is common. Who wouldn't want a fair and cute baby?

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If you go to Miri Bazaar Ramadhan at Seberkas, you may see Chinese faces selling traditional Malay food, until you hear them speak. It is quite funny, actually, with Malays tendencies for halal food, and associating such halal-ness with the face of the sellers. That's why some of these sellers resorted to wearing tudung or having Quranic inscriptions at their stalls to indicate their religion, even though they don't usually wear tudung.

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As far as being a Sarawakian goes, Chinese has always been part of the parcel. Maybe I speak from the point of view of a pseudo-immigrant myself, maybe I speak from a weak minority point of view, maybe I speak from the angle of someone who has spent quite a number of years in America and have seen discrimination and prejudices in its most raw form.

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